Conducting electronic trade with business partners is a complex task that requires multiple levels of control and several stages of interaction to complete a transaction. For example, a manufacturer of electronic systems (e.g. computers) procures electronic components and pre-assembled electronic devices from a plurality of vendors. The manufacturer establishes a trade link with each partner, typically, based on contract guidelines, industry specifications and standards that allow the manufacturer to be supplied with the components in timely fashion and with the least amount of errors.
The process of establishing a link between trading partners is complex. Before starting to place procurement orders, business entities need to check a plurality of business requirements. For example, the business entities have to establish the proper routes of orders, check the business rules on each side of the trade, and check the legal requirements for the trade. Furthermore, a number of rules have to be checked with regard to order and supply handling. For example, exchanging order confirmations, tracking orders, verifying the validity of the content of the orders, processing modifications to orders are all aspects of the business transaction that must be put in place and checked before going to production and making a partner link usable for trading.
Establishing a trade link between business partners has traditionally been conducted manually using personal communication and paper forms. This typically involves writing up the list of requirements and preparing forms for each step of the process of establishing the trade link. The forms are examined, signed and exchanged for the next set of forms. This manual process is not only slow but since it requires involvement of multiple persons; it is error prone and presents multiple breaking points at several levels. Different persons involved in the process may be geographically separated e.g. belong to separate business departments, and the personal communication may not be streamlined to coordinate processing.
Some protocols, such as the ones developed by Rosettanet™, are used to enable computer networks to electronically conduct trade in a streamlined fashion. However, the activation stage for establishing the link with trading partners still relies on the manual process.
Therefore, there is a need for a computer-based system and methods for enabling trading partners to streamline and control the process of activating a link between trading partners.